Urinalysis

Re "Prescription overdose," May 18 The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy bears some responsibility for the rise in prescription overdose deaths. It has been pushing student drug tests without alerting schools and parents to their downside: urinalysis only deters marijuana use because synthetic pharmaceuticals exit the body quickly. This information is readily available on the Internet. It's one of the reasons the American Academy of Pediatrics opposes involuntary drug testing.

Re "Prescription overdose," May 18 The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy bears some responsibility for the rise in prescription overdose deaths. It has been pushing student drug tests without alerting schools and parents to their downside: urinalysis only deters marijuana use because synthetic pharmaceuticals exit the body quickly. This information is readily available on the Internet. It's one of the reasons the American Academy of Pediatrics opposes involuntary drug testing.

A Naval Academy midshipman who failed a random urinalysis test admitted using cocaine and has resigned in the second case of alleged drug use among midshipmen this spring, the school said Wednesday. The academy would not release the midshipman's name, citing federal privacy laws.

Re "His cup runneth over with annoyance," Current, Jan. 29 When a newspaper like The Times forces job candidates to submit to drug tests, it is an unwitting conspirator in a culture war that should have ended with the Vietnam War. Drug tests are essentially lifestyle tests. Despite a short-lived high, marijuana is the only drug that stays in the human body long enough to make urinalysis a deterrent. Synthetic drugs are water soluble and exit the body quickly. If you think drug users don't know this, think again.

Re "His cup runneth over with annoyance," Current, Jan. 29 When a newspaper like The Times forces job candidates to submit to drug tests, it is an unwitting conspirator in a culture war that should have ended with the Vietnam War. Drug tests are essentially lifestyle tests. Despite a short-lived high, marijuana is the only drug that stays in the human body long enough to make urinalysis a deterrent. Synthetic drugs are water soluble and exit the body quickly. If you think drug users don't know this, think again.

During the tenure of this ostensibly conservative government I have watched with dismay as the same people who give lip service to getting government off the backs of the people have consistently made inroads into the private lives of American citizens. Now that we have an example of a girl informing on her parents' drug use, Nancy Reagan and a score of others laud her "right-mindedness" and devotion to her family. Although I recognize that there is a drug problem in this country, it still frightens me when the proof of a citizen's right-mindedness and moral rectitude is demonstrated by children informing on their parents or "voluntary" urinalysis.

Harry Summers (Op-Ed Page, Sept. 8) makes a case for exempting military officers from random urinalysis drug-testing. His reasoning is that to require commissioned officers to provide urine specimens is to call into question "the honor of the officer corps." He quotes, approvingly, the Navy lieutenant who refused to provide a sample, and who called the procedure "demeaning and degrading." I am a career Navy petty officer with 16 years of service, and I recently served as urinalysis program coordinator for a command to which I was attached.

International Remote Imaging Systems Inc., a Chatsworth maker of urinalysis machines, reported a net loss of $58,403 in the quarter that ended March 31 on a 4% gain in revenue to $1.08 million. A year earlier, it lost $397,417 on $1.04 million in revenue. The company said the loss narrowed because of increased product sales and lower operating expenses.

A federal employees' union filed suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in an attempt to stop the Customs Service from requiring workers to undergo urinalyses to detect use of illegal drugs. Robert Tobias, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said such a drug-screening program is "lunacy" and violates the constitutional rights of Customs Service employees. The union represents about 4,000 customs employees, most of whom guard U.S. borders, ports and international airports.

Jim Doehring, a 1988 Olympic shotputter, is caught in a contradiction: He is concerned about the abuse of steroids but is not willing to give up his own use for fear of being left behind. Doehring admitted Friday that he has used steroids to help him remain a world-class track and field competitor, but he also said he wishes he didn't feel a need to do so. "I'd love to do that (compete drug-free against drug-free opponents)," he said. "I know I can throw clean just as far as anyone can."

A handful of public schools in Orange County, once on the vanguard of a national movement to give high school athletes random drug tests, have quietly gotten out of the urinalysis business. The tests were expensive, inconvenient and ultimately an ineffective deterrent, said Don Martin, principal of Corona del Mar High School, which discontinued its 3-year-old testing program last year. A few other Orange County public schools are continuing the tests.

The guy on my right was nursing a bottle of Coors. Then he decided to switch drinks. He ordered a shot of pickle juice. "I like the taste," he explained. "Me too," Bobbie the bartender said. She imbibed from the pickle jar. Never did catch his name, so let's call him Cliff. Just like the mailman on "Cheers," he was filled with fun facts to know and tell. Or maybe it was just the lore of a barfly. Pickle juice, Cliff explained, has many virtues.

A controversy of sorts developed Monday at the Bernat Picornell swimming complex when some Americans questioned the wisdom of the sport's drug-testing policy. Background: Yong Zhuang, a 20-year-old swimmer from China, won the gold medal in Sunday night's 100-meter freestyle, but was not administered a drug test. American Jenny Thompson, favored to win the event, finished second and was tested. "I think all gold medalists should be drug-tested," Thompson said Monday morning.

Civil libertarians and a major government employees' union are pushing for a new kind of test to replace urinalysis in detecting drug use among employees whose impairment could jeopardize public safety. Advocates of the new method--called performance testing or impairment testing--contend it is cheaper, more effective and, above all, much less intrusive than urine testing.

International Remote Imaging Systems Inc., a Chatsworth maker of urinalysis machines, reported a net loss of $58,403 in the quarter that ended March 31 on a 4% gain in revenue to $1.08 million. A year earlier, it lost $397,417 on $1.04 million in revenue. The company said the loss narrowed because of increased product sales and lower operating expenses.

Four sailors and the chief law enforcement officer from a Long Beach-based guided missile frigate face possible court-martial on drug charges and alleged tampering with urinalysis tests, the Navy said. The five were charged this week after a seven-month investigation that yielded 32 drug-related counts, many of them dealing with the use and distribution of marijuana and a crystal form of methamphetamine, said Lt. Cmdr. Steve Chesser of the Long Beach Naval Station.

March 16, 1988 | JOHN KAPLAN, John Kaplan is a professor of law at Stanford Law School

By now it should be obvious that our efforts to control illegal drugs are not working sufficiently. Our attempts to prevent supplies of drugs from reaching the user, though for the most part not ill-advised, are simply not enough to keep the social problem within any reasonable compass. Gangs attempting to monopolize the extremely profitable trade in heroin and cocaine have destroyed the social life of whole neighborhoods, causing untold misery to their law-abiding and decent neighbors.

The state Supreme Court, acting for the first time on the controversy of drug-testing in the workplace, on Thursday allowed a private employer to require that job applicants take drug and alcohol tests.